“No,” I mumble, something twisting inside. It was right here. I stare at the screen, scrolling through the data over and over.
“Kennedy? Can you come out here?” Joe calls, finally back from campus, but I’m not done checking, I keep hoping I’m wrong. It could be showing up somewhere I don’t understand, some part of the program I don’t know about—
“Hey, did you hear me?” Joe peeks his head into the room, catching me off guard. “What’s that?” he asks as I turn the monitor of the computer black.
“Physics,” I say, and Joe nods. Like, of course it’s physics. Not: I think I’m receiving a signal from outer space, but I think it’s a warning, and it’s coming to my house, which, by the way, I swing by at night sometimes while you’re sleeping.
“Can you take a break for a sec?” He asks this though I’ve already obviously shut it down. But we’re like this with each other, asking, always, before we step.
“Okay.” I follow Joe out to the living room, where he sits in the center of the sofa, his arms braced against his legs, leaning forward.
Oh God, we’re about to have a talk. This is the demeanor he exhibited when: we went over the ground rules; we discussed our living arrangement; he sat across from me in the hospital, trying to find the words. The police had taken me there, in the ambulance they had no use for otherwise, because they didn’t know what else to do with me. I sat there, alone, in a white-walled room, with white sheets, a white curtain, everything shadowed beyond the bed. I have no idea how long I was there, only that, by the time I left with Joe, it was daylight.
He’s gotten better at the words. Not so much the demeanor, though.
I perch on the edge of a flannel recliner chair that I’m fairly certain he found at the side of the road somewhere on trash day. And I balance myself carefully on the ledge, leaning forward, so I can take off at any moment, depending on the direction of the conversation.
It’s then I see he has a few sheets of papers beside him, folded into thirds. He spreads them open in front of him, his fingers trembling, like he’s prepared to give me some speech. “The district attorney’s office,” he begins, and I’m already standing.
Here I thought he was out having fun with friends. But he was probably just working his way up to this.
He puts the papers aside. “Kennedy, sit down. We’re supposed to do this. I promised them.”
“Joe, come on.”
“The trial starts next week, Kennedy.”
“It’s not my trial.”
I see the muscle in his jaw clenching, but he must’ve taken up yoga or something, because he takes this deep breath and the muscle finally relaxes. So much different than the early days, when he’d slam a door, grab at his hair, look up at the ceiling, his eyes bone-dry but looking as if he’d been crying. He takes a deep breath. “I told him we’d go over the questions. Just you and me. None of that.” He shakes his head, as if the problem were the office, the wooden table, the man, and not the crack running through everything.
“Joe, I know. I know. And we will, I promise. But I can’t tonight.” I scramble for any excuse, completely desperate. “Lydia asked if I could sleep over. I forgot to check with you, but I told her I’d be there after dinner.” I look at my phone. It’s definitely after dinner, whether we’ve eaten or not.
“It’s a school night,” he says, but his objection is halfhearted already.
“Right. But Lydia goes to my school. We’re studying. We were studying, earlier, but then I had to leave.” I stare directly at him, my eyes watering from not blinking. I’ve never lied to him so directly. I hold my breath.
“This is important,” he reiterates, though I can see he’s losing steam. Joe wants me to have friends, to have a social life. To move on. He wants me to do this.
“Tomorrow,” I say. “After school. I can do this tomorrow.” I gesture to the papers, the couch and chair, whatever this whole thing is.
He nods. “Do you need a ride?”
“No,” I say, “she’s close enough to take my bike.”
“Leave me the address. And a phone number.”
“Joe, come on,” I say, even though my mother would’ve said the same. “I have my phone.” But still, I jot down the address, knowing he won’t look it up. Because his mind is already somewhere else. “Go out,” I tell him. “Have some fun.”
Joe used to be surrounded by an ever-changing stream of girls. I’m not sure if they were girlfriends, but there was typically some girl. I’d met at least three different ones in those first six months when we all lived in the same town. When we moved last year for my mom’s new position at the university, my mom said it was because she wanted to keep the small family we had together as much as we could—at first I thought for Joe, since my grandparents died while he was in college; but now I thought it was really for us instead. But I haven’t seen any girl—or really, any friend at all—in the six months I’ve been living with Joe. As if, in solidarity, he’s adopted the same ground rules as me. “The house is yours again,” I say, gesturing with my arm in a flourish.
He smiles faintly. When he stands, I retreat toward my room, to get ready to spend the night at my old house, excited that I won’t need to sneak out to get there, for once.
When I’m almost at my room, he calls after me. “Kennedy, I miss them, too. I’m on your side. Always.”
My throat tightens. “I know,” I say, but I’m already closing the door, and I’m not sure if he’s heard me.
I need help. I need help from someone who is definitely on my side with this. Joe wouldn’t be. Joe thinks he is, but he wants to sell the house, and he wants to go over questions. He wants to sit in the past, dealing with the minutiae of what’s left of our lives.
* * *
—
My bag is packed for my fake stay at Lydia’s, but I’m not quite ready to go yet.
Visitor357 hasn’t responded, probably because I sent some embarrassing message rambling about disappearing people, totally downplaying the fact that his brother is gone. So I send an addendum:
I meant to say, I’m sorry about your brother.
But also, I’m sorry, because I don’t think this is related to your brother.
I know you’re looking for him. But I think, I think, you’ve stumbled upon something else. We’re missing something. Because it’s not just your room. It’s also a radio telescope at my house. I hate to ask this. I know how this will sound. The Internet, I know, predators, creeps, etc, etc. But. Locations would help.
I’m on the 37th parallel, north.
Etc, etc.
I was back in my room, locked away, fake-studying, when my phone dinged with a new message. I didn’t know what to say to KJ’s last message (the feeling, he explained, like you’re on the edge of understanding something, even when something is gone, and the not knowing, where everything and anything is possible. Yes, yes. But you can’t just write back Yes, yes, to some dude on the Internet who’s looking for aliens. You can’t write back Something was taken from me, and I keep searching the emptiness, and I think I see something else, not just emptiness, something else), and I figured that was the end of that. But now there’s this new one.
What. The. Hell.
The 37th parallel? As in, latitude and longitude lines? What am I even supposed to do with that?
I pull up a fresh Internet window and search for a latitude and longitude grid. I find a site with an interactive map of the world, crisscrossed with labeled lines. I zoom in, finding the 37 north mark, and trace it across the screen. It bisects the entire country. The entire world. And okay, it’s possible I’m on it, too. It cuts straight through Virginia. But it also cuts through California, Asia, Europe. I get that he’s trying to let us keep some anonymity, but I don’t think this is helping.
We’re missing something, he says.
Wel
l, I’ll add it to the ever-growing list of things I’m missing right now. Whatever’s happening next door, and downstairs. The stack of textbooks on the side of my desk, my untouched math study guide beside the pile.
I stare at the study guide I haven’t yet started and probably won’t—circles, angles, degrees, equations. Answers that require calculations.
We are missing something. We keep focusing on the fact that this is happening. But the why isn’t always important. Or: the why isn’t always understood. That’s how I’ve been approaching my search—not in the hard, scientific facts, but in the unpredictable.
So it’s not just that it’s happening; it’s the signal itself. We’ve been ignoring that part, but there’s definitely a pattern. I pull up the data from KJ’s readout, which is much more practical than my own, with raw data. And I start plugging numbers in.
Count the time, KJ said. That’s what’s the same. The timing. Not the type of signal, not our exact location, but this. The pattern: the spike, the hold.
I’m only seeing a video of his data, so I can’t get the numbers exact, but I can get a rough estimate. And it looks like the spike happens every three seconds.
I wonder now whether the pattern means something.
I look at the math study guide again. A bunch of questions asking me to Calculate the area, Calculate the circumference. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and my spine straightens.
The geometry of a circle. Pi. It’s a universal ratio between the circumference and diameter of any circle: 3.14. The numbers go on and on from there, to infinity. Could it be?
I’m sure there’s something more to pi than what I know from Algebra 2, so I look it up online, more convinced than ever.
It’s an irrational number, unable to be expressed as a common fraction. Well, this is an irrational event.
It’s a transcendental number, whatever that means. But also: this is a transcendental event.
I dump everything into my bag, preparing to go. My hands are shaking as I hit Reply.
I wish I were better at math. I hope KJ is better. I’m sure he is, with a radio telescope pointed at the sky. I’m guessing astronomy requires a lot of math.
I’m hoping he’s open to suggestions on this, though, because there is no way this signal in my house is coming from outer space. It’s my brother’s room. KJ is wrong. It’s related, but he’s wrong.
My brother trying to tell me something. With the fever dream. With this.
I need to go back to the scene of his disappearance, where he must’ve slipped through. If this is a clue, this pattern, this pi, I wonder if Liam’s trying to tell me something about how he disappeared, or why. If he can’t breach the barrier with language, but with math.
I write quickly:
I think I know what we’re missing. Like you said, it’s the timing. Every three seconds or so—could it be pi? 3.14, etc, etc. That’s some universal constant, right? For something to do with circles? Wouldn’t it make sense, if something was trying to speak to us but they couldn’t just speak to us, they’d do it with math?
PS—Has it occurred to you that maybe the signal isn’t coming from space? (Could it be something closer? Say, whatever’s in my house?)
PPS—I don’t know what the 37th parallel north is exactly, except I think I’m on it, too. But for clarity’s sake, I’ll say this instead: I’m in Virginia.
I read it over and laugh at my use of etc, etc. Maybe he’ll think I’m smarter than I am, talking like that. I don’t know why this is funny. The moment feels irrational. Transcendental.
As if I, Nolan Chandler, am finally onto something.
The one thing I wanted to do at the house tonight was to look through Elliot’s notes, to try to understand. To see if I could figure out what was happening on December fourth, while I was gone.
By the time I arrive at the house, though, and hide my bike under the shadow of the front porch, I have a new message on the forum. But I can only check with my phone, since the house no longer has Internet.
I read it on the way to the shed around back, where I’ve left the box of Elliot’s notes, with my bag slung over my shoulder.
There are two things that stick out in the message. That make me freeze. That make the goose bumps rise across my arms.
The first: pi. How did I not see that? I’m practically running to the computer out back to see if he’s right, when I notice the second part of his message: Virginia.
Holy. Crap.
So what if he doesn’t want to think this is coming from space? I’ll deal with that later. There’s no way this radio telescope picks up something from his house. It’s pointing at the sky. Anyway, he’s mapping electromagnetic fields, and I’m documenting radio frequencies. We’re not even looking at the same thing.
There’s something more important here. The location. And the pattern itself. Pi. Holy crap, I think he might be right.
I write back immediately, telling him I’m in the process of confirming, and then I tell him the name of my county before I can stop myself and think about whether this is a good idea or not.
For a second, I wonder if he’s some master computer hacker or something, who has hacked into my forum account, has seen where I was sending my message from, and has responded accordingly. If he’s doing this to play me, prey on me. But then I think of his notes about his brother, the video with the blue wall, and no. It’s not possible.
We have something here. Something real.
* * *
—
The problem with Elliot’s equipment is that it isn’t exactly the highest-tech equipment in the world. This began as some independent project last summer, before the start of his freshman year of college, and it took on a life of its own after that—he brought at least one friend back from college to see it: I saw them at night after, lying on their backs, looking up at the stars.
It’s an old satellite dish, plus scraps he acquired from various old electronics, and a computer program I think he partly copied and partly made himself, and I’m having difficulty pulling the exact times from the readout. But I think Visitor357 is right, even with my inexact calculations. It’s definitely right around three seconds. And he’s right; that’s close enough that it could be pi.
I kick myself, that I didn’t think of it first.
Elliot told me that when Voyager was sent into space with a message for any extraterrestrial life that might come upon it, our mathematical definitions were included, possibly as a way to communicate.
The signal has to mean something. And yes, it makes sense: this is what you’d send. Math is universal. The ratio of a circle would be the same anywhere. The universe operates by certain laws that are bigger than all of us.
This is one of them.
* * *
—
My eyes have gone dry and the numbers on the screen are starting to go fuzzy when I hear footsteps out back—several people’s footsteps. And then, underneath, the familiar mode of speaking among the group of friends I’ve come to know so well since we moved in last year.
Sutton is leading them across the field behind the shed; I don’t even have to look out the window to know it. His voice is the most distinct. Marco and Lydia are following a step or two behind, interjecting periodically. I can’t make out any of the conversation, but their presence here is enough to be suspicious.
They were here on Friday, when the signal started coming through. Lydia and Marco said they know what I’ve been doing at the house, messing with the inside to scare prospective buyers off. It made me suspicious then, and it makes me suspicious now that they’re here again. I need to know what they really do around here.
I quietly step outside the shed, picking out their darker shadows heading to the other end of the field. To Freedom Battleground State Park.
They move in a pack, each anticipating
the other’s moves; all my time hanging out with them, and I never felt I fit in, because I didn’t. As Lydia said, she would literally forget I was there. I wasn’t meant to be a member. I was always just a visitor.
I met Marco almost right after we moved into this house, the summer before starting at a new school. And I hitched myself to their group when we started hanging out, never making myself a separate set of close friends. Friends who would call me up, rally around me after an eventual breakup.
Well, lesson learned and then some. The friends I made here were all friends-of-Marco first. There is no rallying group remaining.
I keep about fifty yards behind them now, and Lydia’s right—they never even notice me. I’m right here and no one turns around. If they spotted me now, it would be creepy, I’ll give her that. But it’s their own fault.
They duck between a row of trees, following a path deeper into the park. Their voices stay low, as if they’re trespassing and afraid of getting caught. It’s a Sunday night, and Sutton’s got a bag with him, and every once in a while someone shines a light on the path with their phone.
Eventually they veer off the trail into a larger clearing, and Sutton lets out a cheer as he climbs on top of a tire swing, swinging like a pendulum in the dark night. He swings back my way, where I’m standing behind a row of hedges, but he never notices me. I feel the rush of air as the tire brushes by me; I’m close enough to reach out and touch him. We’re in a playground in the middle of the park, next to some picnic tables. I think there are probably grills around; I’ve been in here before, but only in the daylight.
Marco opens Sutton’s bag, pulling out a can of beer.
Wow, mystery solved. Apparently they need to trek from their neighborhood, across my property, into a state park, off hours, in order to carry a backpack full of beer to the center of a playground in the middle of the night. Completely logical. Completely.
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